One of the most famous residents of the Trading Estate was Gerry Anderson, whose company AP Films had studios there in the 1960s.

AP Films was founded in 1957 by Gerry Anderson and Arthur Provis, and was originally based at Islet Park in Maidenhead. The company is best known for making puppet series' for TV, and their early series, 'The Adventures of Twizzle' and 'Torchy the Battery Boy', were made here.

After making the pilot episode of their next series, 'Four Feather Falls', Arthur Provis left the company. 'Four Feather Falls' was sold to Granada Television and then, in June 1959, AP Films moved into larger premises in Ipswich Road, on the Slough Trading Estate.

A new series, 'Supercar', was not bought by Granada, which left AP Films on the verge of bankruptcy. However, a meeting between Gerry Anderson and Lew Grade proved fruitful, as Grade, head of ATV, agreed to buy 'Supercar', Anderson's first science-fiction series, and finance another, 'Fireball XL5'.

Grade also invested £75,000 in the company, which allowed it to move into custom-built premises on Stirling Road and Edinburgh Avenue, on the other side of the Trading Estate, where they stayed for the next 8 years. The company's first colour series, 'Stingray', was made there in 1963. The bigger facilities allowed underwater sequences to be filmed there.

Next up was the company's biggest, and probably most fondly remembered, series - 'Thunderbirds'. It took five production units 18 months to film the first series of 26 episodes, but the results were thought to be worth it, as it was sold to over 30 countries. A second series went into production, but Lew Grade decided he wanted a new programme instead, so only another 6 episodes were made.

The new programme was 'Captain Scarlet', 32 episodes of which were made in 1967. It was popular, but never quite hit the heights of 'Thunderbirds'. Following on from this, Anderson made a live-action film, 'Journey to the Far Side of the Sun', and another puppet series for TV, 'Joe 90'. This proved to be less popular than the previous two, but the next one, titled 'Secret Service', was cancelled after only 13 episodes.

Now at the end of the sixties, Anderson switched to making live-action series, and in the 70s produced programmes such as 'UFO', 'The Protectors' and 'Space 1999'. It was during the filming of 'UFO' that production was moved to the ATV Studios in Elstree, thus ending AP Films' time in Slough.